1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an electronic document generation system for generating an electronic document and a technique related thereto.
2. Background Art
Techniques for scanning an original document to generate an electronic document are known for use in an image forming apparatus such as a Multi-Functional Peripheral (MFP).
Examples of the electronic document generation techniques include a technique for generating an electronic document (e.g., a compact PDF document) by separating a scanned image into a character area and a non-character area (e.g., a photographic area) and compressing the non-character area at a relatively high compression rate and the character area at a relatively low compress (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-193234, for example). With this technique, it is possible to reduce the capacity (improve the compactness) of an electronic document file while maintaining the viewability of characters.
The examples also include a technique for generating an electronic document with text data, which will be described later (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2012-073749, for example). More specifically, a scanned image (in particular, an image representing characters) of an original document is subjected to optical character recognition processing (hereinafter also referred to as “OCR processing”) so that text data of characters in the scanned image is automatically recognized and overlaid with and embedded in the scanned image without being displayed. This produces an electronic document in a predetermined format (electronic document with text data) such as a PDF (portable document format) (or searchable PDF) document with invisible text.
There is also a technique for generating an electronic document (also referred to as a “searchable compact PDF file,” for example) that is compact (highly compressed) and searchable. With this technique, processing (also referred to as “compactness improving processing”) including a series of sub-processes for making a document compact (e.g., an area separation process and a compression process), and OCR processing for making a document searchable (also referred to as “searchableness improving processing”) are performed, and the results of the compactness improving processing and the searchableness improving processing are used as a basis to generate an electronic document.
Incidentally, it is conceivable to cause another apparatus (also referred to as a “cooperative apparatus”) different from an apparatus (electronic document generation apparatus) for generating an electronic document on the basis of a scanned image to execute OCR processing (searchableness improving processing), instead of the electronic document generation apparatus performing the OCR processing in addition to the aforementioned processing (compactness improving processing) consisting of a series of sub-processes. To be more specific, the electronic document generation apparatus first executes the series of sub-processes, then causes the cooperative apparatus (e.g., a cloud server) to perform OCR processing, and uses the result of OCR processing received from the cooperative apparatus to generate an electronic document.
In such processing, however, the OCR processing, which is a process separate from the series of sub-processes, is further executed after continuous execution and completion of the series of sub-processes. Thus, the cooperative apparatus cannot start execution of the OCR processing until the series of sub-processes is completed. This reduces efficiency in processing.